by John Ridley

Stars mingle during the 2007 Golden Globes.
Bob Long/HFPA via Getty Images

Celebrities filled the Beverly Hilton's ballroom during last year's Golden Globes.

Even if you can't help but have disdain for awards shows — and I can't help but have disdain for awards shows — last night's Golden Globes were a downer. With the threat of being picketed during the ongoing writers' strike, the evening was de-glamorized from a gala night of a thousand stars to a press conference of four infotainment news readers. In the first five minutes of the show, co-hosts Billy Bush and Nancy O'Dell tossed to Shaun Robinson and Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger, who made a point of telling you how exciting it was going to be. Well, that didn't much encourage my finger to stray too far from the fast-forward button on my DVR remote.

The amazing thing is that the producers were actually able to stretch what amounted to reading names from a list into an hour-long show. To avoid dead air, the program was filled with video clips and fattened with Bush and O'Dell deconstructing the wins. But when you're talking about how, say, Marion Cotillard pulls out a victory over Nikki Blonsky, the conversation quickly devolves into super-insider clack that even the hosts seemed to have a hard time following.

At one point, O'Dell theorized how artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel managed to eke out a win over the likes of the Coen Brothers. It was a rambling explanation that explained nothing. Bush just stared at O'Dell blankly for a moment, offered a curt "good point" and moved on, as if finally acknowledging the ship was sinking and it was time to start swimming fast.

Hey, you've got to give them credit for doing the best with what little they had: a night of mostly indie, arthouse movies and cable fare, and not a single star whose appearance wasn't courtesy of a film clip.

And though the affair was funny in a midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of way, there's nothing funny about the loss of the Golden Globes gala. It was estimated the absence of the gala — and all the parties and related spending — will put an $80 million hit on the city's economy. Eighty million lost in just one weekend. And with the governor announcing the state is facing a double-digit billion dollar revenue shortfall, the tax revenue on that money is something the city and state can ill-afford to part with.

With this year's Globes laying face down in the dirt, Hollywood now turns its attention to the Feb. 24 Oscar kudo-cast. With the countdown begun, the question is not if there will be a show, but if Hollywood can afford not to have one.